The Challenges of New Biopsychosocialities: Hearing Voices, Trauma, Epigenetics and Mediated Perception

Abstract

This chapter considers the promise of epigenetics in the context of the phenomenon of voice hearing and the question of how to account for the links between voice hearing, trauma and abuse. The chapter explores the epistemic spaces and controversies, which surround the calls for a more psychosocial approach to be incorporated into the more molecular focus of epigenetics. This includes the vexed question of how to invent and work with models of psychological processes, which are processual, indeterminate and contiguous with the biological, social, technical, material and immaterial. These challenges are posed for sociologists, psychosocial researchers and molecular biologists, who when theorizing psychological processes, are often trapped by an individual/social dualism or bifurcation between nature and culture. The chapter explores evidence from the Hearing Voices Movement to draw out the issues at stake for addressing biosocial matters.